This video—RMB City Opera—highlights RMB City’s virtual cityscape. It includes many emblematic sites such as Tiananmen Square and the Beijing Olympic Stadium. During the video, the viewer enters the city, soaring through and amongst its architectural wonders.

In RMB City Opera a man and a woman interact as actors on a stage and as avatars in the virtual world. Inspired by propaganda operas from the Chinese Cultural Revolution, RMB City Opera includes characters in Red Army uniforms. Batman and Batwoman, Superman and Superwoman are also among the cast.

RMB City Opera is rich in content. It explores the idea of play, romance, identity, utopia/dystopia, communication/isolation, the nature of reality and the global, interconnected world in which we live. This is its American debut.

It’s a fascinating work and I highly recommend checking it out. And thanks to my good friend Tim O’Neill, I had the opportunity to develop a simple “virtual guestbook” for the exhibit that also features an interview between the artist Cao Fei and NAMA curator Leesa Fanning.

With regard to the setup, nothing fancy here, really…just a simple adaption of WordPress. But I think the end result hangs together nicely with the rest of the environment. I have to admit — getting the chance to have my work in the museum in support of the exhibit has been quite a thrill. Not to mention having a great time working with the Nelson-Atkins staff. We’re already in the process of working on more digital features for the upcoming Monet exhibit in April!

Following a disappointing two-game roadtrip against divisional opponents Oakland and Denver that resulted in two tough losses, the Kansas City faithful were ready to welcome their beloved Chiefs back to Arrowhead. The team took every advantage of the opportunity to right the ship against a weak Cardinals team that was a shadow of its former Super Bowl contending glory. Further, the unseasonably glorious late November weather made for yet another incredible game at Arrowhead Stadium.

Arizona Cardinals: 13
Kansas City Chiefs: 31

San Diego Chargers: 14
Kansas City Chiefs: 21

As we start to ramp up into our fall season of programs, one of the first things that’s been done is that the AAF-KC’s Art+Copy Club has issued a “Mad Men” creative challenge. Check it:

Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce Hiring KC Creative Team.

Mad Men is not a show about great ads. It’s a great show about ad people. So it was no surprise that Don’s bikini ad from this season’s first episode fell flat. “So well-built, we can’t show you the second floor?” WTF, Don!

In an effort to regain the trust of their prospective client (and keep them from the evil clutches of Y&R), Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce is looking for new …creative concepts.

Assignment:
Use Don’s strategy but in a more effective creative execution.

Incentive: (because spec work sucks)
All work that doesn’t end up in Don’s wastebasket will be posted on the Art+Copy Facebook page. The three best concepts will win:

• 1st Place Two free tickets to the September 23rd Art+Copy event with Stanley Hainsworth, former Global Creative Director for Starbucks.
• 2nd Place Drinks with Mad Men and AAF-KC hunks, Kevin Fullerton and Jeremy Johnson.
• 3rd Place Bottle of bourbon and a cocktail recipe book.

Due Date:
August 17, 2010 (it’s advertising, it’s okay to be a few decades late)

Winners will be chosen as soon as we get around to it. You know how it works: the creative deadline is always rushed to give the client ample time to sit on his hands and make you wait for a decision.

Submit Your Work To:
Send a PDF to Jeremy Johnson at president@artandcopyclub.com.

Mad Men fictional ads: So poorly written, we can’t wait for you to do better.

Not being one to miss a chance to out-Don the great Don Draper, I decided to whip up four of my own concepts. Whaddya think?

[Click each thumb below to bigify/enbiggen.]

On Saturday of this past weekend I took the family up to the Kansas City Chiefs training camp in St. Joseph, MO, for their annual Family Fun Day. My mom, the family’s resident super fan, was thrilled. Meanwhile the missus and I were pretty much preoccupied with making sure the kids didn’t melt in the heat. Regardless of not getting much time to watch the drills, I did manage to help mom get autographs from Dwayne Bowe, Chris Chambers, Alex Magee and Tyson Jackson. And ice cream was enjoyed by all.

I’m looking forward to this football season. Win or lose, the Chiefs are my team and I suspect they’ll have at least a few interesting moments this year. Here’s hoping they can catch some early momentum when they open up the season at the newly renovated Arrowhead Stadium on Monday Night Football against the San Diego Chargers.

Yes, I’ve already bought my tickets. Can’t. Wait.

It’s been an awesome if not exhausting week for shows for me. Thankfully, last night’s bill at the Crossroads KC was just what I needed. Memphis-made rockers Lucero and the Dallas-bred quartet the Old 97s transformed the lot behind Grinders into a makeshift roadhouse dive with their distinct brands of swaggering liquor-soaked country rock. With a mulch floor beneath the crowd’s feet and a beautifully open evening sky above — not to mention about as a bearable of an evening as you can get in KC in late July temperature-wise — the setting couldn’t be more perfect.

While some in the crowd were muttering about who should really be opening for who, with the majority opinion seeming to be that Lucero should have been topping the bill, the derision was nullified by the robust setlist delivered by both bands. Lucero frontman Ben Nichols trademark whiskey-on-gravel vocals were delivered with an intense sense of sincerity as the band paced through a generous mix of well-established and newer material. Meanwhile, the Old 97s’ Rhett Miller took more of a hammed up alt-country approach by working the crowd with hip sways, leg kicks and hair tosses while the band blasted through their core cuts with a few cover song surprises thrown in (Merle Haggard’s “Mama Tried” and REM’s “Driver 8″). For a crowd looking to shake off the dust and dirt of the KC summer, this was a show custom-built for the beer-and-barstool jetset.

Many thanks to Concert Chris for the hook-up on the tix. My photos of the evening are below…

For being a record hot week in Kansas City, Friday night was a bearable ordeal when it came to the temperature. With regard to the music, however, the evening was a much more hospitable affair. It was an eclectic lineup for sure.

As an opener, the Crash Kings got their due with the early crowd and likely earned some fresh looks and new fans for the effort. Against Me! paced themselves through a scorcher of a set before giving way to DEVO, a stylistic transition that was less than seamless. The quintet’s 80s art school punk sound that once served as heavy rotation fodder during the heady early days of MTV was in rare form, accompanied by a stage show that was an inflatable human-sized hamster ball and a couple of confetti cannons away from finding a more contemporary analog.

The Silversun Pickups may have benefited from the cooler breezes of the evening but had to push their way through a miserably muddy and overdriven sound mix that was as thick as the pungent humidity pressing down upon the crowd. And to cap off the night, Ben Folds managed to transform the City Market into a sweaty piano bar complete with a raucously engaged crowd ready to belt along with every tune. Be sure to check out the excellent review on Back To Rockville. My pics from the evening are below…

[Full disclosure: Many thanks to Mary at Sideways Media, the promo folks for Crash Kings, for passing along tickets for Friday's show.]